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Web innovators

Efficiencies come with new apps

While Facebook and its several iterations have broken long-standing ways to communicate, Uber is doing much the same for automobile transportation. Thanks to smartphones and app technology, almost anyone now can be an Uber taxi driver and can get a cab more quickly. That has multiplied 10 fold the ability to carry passengers and specialty items in urban settings, sometimes in imaginative ways.

Five years old, Uber has reduced the value of Yellow Cab-type taxi franchises, increased response time, given part-time drivers a source of revenue and promoted imaginative services. Christmas tree and ice-cream delivery, a helicopter to pricey ocean resorts? On a small scale, Uber is doing it.

“Ridesharing” is the term.

Uber started in San Francisco early in 2010 and jumped to Paris. Now, it is in 200 cities in 45 countries and growing, all in the face of plenty of pushback from taxi companies, which have long enjoyed having their competitive positions protected by government statutes. Vetting drivers to avoid those with police records, and requiring liability insurance and adequate car condition are part of the Uber framework. Passengers pay through their smartphones with drivers receiving a commission. To consider the company’s history is to believe it has been a great game for its originators, limited only by their imagination. What auto-related transportation roles can we play? It’s a question they probably asked one another. First, dark-windowed limousines. Then, the use of a vehicle known from the movies (“Back to the Future”) and the delivery of specialty items, such as that ice cream and pets. All by contractors using their own conveyances.

That makes for the company of 2015, heavy on ideas, software and the Internet and very, very light on capital requirements. The result? A company based on recent levels of investment that is valued at $40 billion.

Not all has been handled correctly. There have been suggestions that new markets have been opened without drivers’ records or vehicle quality being fully reviewed, and the company’s leadership has been cited, on occasion, as being demeaning toward women. In some countries, Uber’s arrival looks to be a contest with the government. Try this, low-key that, all until permissible operating rules are determined. Uber’s prices, too, are reportedly well-above usual taxi rates (at high-use times, such as New Year’s Eve, prices jump).

Facebook has its critics, but it has brought family, friends and acquaintances closer together to an extent that telephone calls and letter-writing could not achieve. Uber looks to be on track to create the same sort of revolution in urban travel. Another example of an ever-changing world.



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